Waiting for the Gasman

There are several things about San Miguel that remind me of life in Israel back in the 70s. The lack of central heating is one of them. Waiting to have gas delivered is another. In the USA, we take it for granted that the gas is piped--as if by magic-- into our houses. As long as we keep paying the bills, we don't have to worry about it running out. But here the gas is delivered in cannisters (we used to call them "balonim" in Israel). The cannisters are outside, so theoretically we should not have to be home when they are delivered. But we have to pay for the gas that we are using while we are here. So we had to be here to pay the gasman.

We were told that the delivery was going to be around 2 PM. Our classes ended at 1:45 and we rushed home. That meant that we couldn't go out to eat for lunch today and we didn't have time to even buy any additional groceries. Luckily, I still had half a bag of uncooked pasta and some vegetables left over from our previous grocery shopping. So I made lunch, assuming that we might be interrupted at any minute but too hungry to wait until after they came. It's a good thing that I didn't wait. They didn't arrive until after 4 PM.

So--even though the rain stopped in the late morning--we spent a quiet afternoon at home. Micha took a nap while I tried to review the differences between preterite indefinido and imperfecto. For some reason, I'm also having a lot of trouble memorizing the conjugations. And it's beginning to look like I might need to increase the strength of my reading glasses. There isn't a strong light in the living room and I'm having a really hard time seeing whether words are supposed to have an accent mark or not. You should see me taking the textbook into the kitchen area and trying to hold the list of verbs under the stronger light to determine whether there is an accent mark or not. I would do my studying in the kitchen, but there is not enough room to sit down and set up a table.

It's a bit frustrating that I still forget and get confused with the conjugations. The truth is that I should have been studying at least a little bit while I was in the States.

Anyway, I got so wrapped up in my studying that I didn't pay attention to the time. So I missed going to the Spanish movie about Panco Villa at the Biblioteca, which I thought would be another good way to practice and improve my Spanish skills.

Micha says that this is probably a good day for us to go visit the exercise room at the apartment complex and I guess that will have to substitute for the movie. We've been doing so much walking (including climbing lots of stairs and walking up some pretty steep streets) that I haven't really felt much need to exercise. But I'll give it a try.